A Different Kind of Forever(97)

Brian was shaking his head. “Remember when Jess tried to see if her Barbie could swim and tried to flush the damn thing? Ben was laughing so hard he couldn’t get the damn wrench working.”

“God, I’d forgotten that.”

“A defense mechanism on your part, I’m sure. Usually you remember everything.”

“Unlike you, who needs notes left on your shoes so you can remember which one goes on which foot,” I joked.

Brian was grinning broadly. “God, you’re right about that. I have a hard time keeping track of so many things. In fact, there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about for weeks, and I just keep forgetting about it.”

I sat up straighter, smiled, and tried the dutiful schoolgirl look. “Well, here we are, and you’ve obviously remembered, so shoot.”

“Yeah. Well it’s actually the main reason I came back. I wanted to tell you when the girls weren’t here.”

“Weren’t here?”

“Yes. I didn’t want them to see me pack.”

I was still smiling. “Pack what?”

“My clothes. And my books. And everything. I’m leaving you, Mona. I’m very sorry. This is not about you, really. You’ve been a wonderful wife, but I’ve met someone else and I want to be with her. So, I’ll just pack up my things and go.”

He said this all very calmly. He might have been explaining why the little referee man threw up one of those flag-thingies during a football game. I stared at him, trying to latch on to something that actually made sense.

“You’re packing?” I repeated. I was looking at him. Then I looked at Lana, still sitting patiently beside me. She offered no suggestions, so I looked back at Brian. “Your clothes?”

Brian cleared his throat and spoke very slowly. “Yes, Mona, I’m packing my clothes and moving out. I want a divorce.” Then he stood up and walked out of the kitchen.

I looked at Lana again. She yawned. I followed my husband out of the kitchen and grabbed his arm as he started up the stairs. “Divorce? What are you talking about? Who did you meet? Where did you meet anybody? Except for your business trips, we go everywhere together. How could you meet someone?”

Brian ran his hand through his hair. “It’s a woman at work, Mona. Dominique.”

“What?” Dominique? Was he crazy? There are no real women named Dominique.

“You met her,” Brian continued. “At the Christmas party. She transferred down from Boston.”

Wait. Yes. Now I remembered. Her name was Dominique because she was from France, where the name Dominique is not outrageously pretentious, but actually as common as Nicole or Emily or Shanique. She was also about fourteen years old and roughly the size and shape of a bamboo shoot. I remembered her, quite plainly, because at the Christmas party she was wearing an amazing winter-white suit that I had tried on at Nordstrom, but decided against buying because it made my butt look too big, with very chi-chi red alligator pumps.

“Dominique with the accent? And the blonde hair? And red shoes? Are you kidding? You’re old enough to be her grandfather.”

Brian looked insulted. “She’s thirty, Mona.”

“Thirty? You’re leaving me for a thirty-year-old bimbo?”

Brian pulled away from me and started up the stairs. “She is anything but a bimbo. She has an MBA from Georgetown. She actually interned at the White House.”

“So did Monica Lewinsky,” I yelled. “You can’t leave me.”

Brian turned on the stairs and looked down at me. Literally and figuratively. “I am leaving you, Mona. I’ve already spoken to a lawyer. You have a great deal of your own money, but I will be very generous. I’m not going to be a jerk about this. You can have the house and kids.”

He turned back and marched upstairs. I stood there, watching him, feeling like a total loser. Then I screamed up to him at the top of my lungs.

“But I don’t want the house and kids.



When Brian came back downstairs twenty-seven minutes later, I was calm. I was rational. I was the perfect Model of Wife.

Things happened in a marriage. I knew that. And since I’d once been in therapy for eighty-three days, I knew that I could be a challenging person to live with.

I knew that there could be issues in a marriage that go completely unnoticed by a preoccupied spouse. I watch enough Dr. Phil to realize that things may have been going on that I was totally unaware of. Like that woman who didn’t know that her husband was actually a cross-dresser until she threatened to sue her dry cleaner for all her missing clothes, and the poor guy had to confess. So, it’s possible that there had been a blip on the radar that I didn’t pick up on. I’m a big person. I can admit my mistakes. And I was perfectly willing to do whatever it took to get my marriage back to where I thought it was, say, oh, two hours before.